A lot like Mitch had done by bringing that girl, Lara—no Clara—home from the bar.

The memory of Simone finding that girl’s earring in his bed flashed in his mind. He knew she thought he’d slept with her, and the decent part of him whispered he needed to come clean. But another part—the part that was still really pissed at her—wouldn’t let him.

He focused on the screen. “What did you find?”

“Pull up a chair.” Ryan angled the laptop so Mitch could see it. “Simone told me her husband’s name before reidentification was Graham. I did a search, and this is what came up.”

He paged back up to the top of the article. It was dated over ten years ago and had been written by a reporter covering the case against Reynolds, Palmer, and McMillian, a high-powered law firm in Hartford, Connecticut. Mitch scanned the article, which outlined the state’s case, including charges of racketeering. The article mentioned Simone’s late husband by name as the accountant for the firm, and that he’d agreed to turn state’s evidence against his employers in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

It was the same information Simone had told them earlier. With two exceptions. This made it sound like Simone’s husband had received immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony, and the article hinted at a link between the firm and a secret organization with ties to the “power elite.”

A buzzing sounded in Mitch’s brain. The article was familiar. Too familiar. He read it from the beginning again, scrolled down, then froze when he saw the sketch the reporter had done of a symbol linked to this “power elite.”

Everything inside him went cold. Ice cold. He stared at the image of the three daggers, one pointed down, the other two perpendicular to the first, both pointing outward to form a cross, and above, a circle at the top, filled with two numbers and one letter.

“Oh fuck,” he whispered. “Fuck me.” This was not happening. No way was this happening.

“What?” Ryan asked.

The air closed in around Mitch. He pushed back from the table and dropped his head between his knees, focusing on drawing a breath. Simone’s panic attack suddenly seemed like nothing compared to this.

“Mitch?” Ryan asked again. “What the hell’s going on?”

Without lifting his head, Mitch turned the laptop so Ryan could see the screen.

“Yeah? So?” Ryan said. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

Slowly, because his hands were shaking, Mitch unlatched the watch he always wore on his left wrist and lifted his arm so Ryan could see the mark—no, not a mark, a brand—he kept hidden.

The room went stone-cold silent for several seconds, then Ryan whispered, “What the fuck is that?”

Mitch strapped the watch back to his wrist and pushed back from the table. He couldn’t sit. He had to walk. He had to think. “You know exactly what it is.”

Ryan sat stunned in his chair while Mitch paced the length of the conference room. “You joined a secret society? When did this happen? And why the hell didn’t I know about it?”

“Because it was secret, dumbass. That’s the whole point of a secret society.”

“But…how? When—?”

“In college. And you didn’t know because you were too busy hitting on my sister at the time to give a rip about what I was up to.”

Ryan was silent for a minute and then said, “You got tapped by a secret society our senior year?”

“That’s usually when it happens.”

“Why you? I mean…I was the one involved in a dozen different organizations on campus. I was the one with the higher GPA. I was the captain of the baseball team, and the one—”

“Holy hell, Harrison. Get over yourself, would you?” Mitch stopped and stared at his friend in utter disbelief. “This isn’t a competition over who was the better man in college.”

“They obviously thought you were if they tapped you and not me,” Ryan muttered. “Man, they really screwed the pooch there.”

“Son of a bitch.” Mitch raked both hands through his hair. “Focus, moron. This is fucking important.”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay, sorry.” Ryan held up a hand. “I’m just…surprised, that’s all. I mean…wow. They tapped you. I seriously did not see that coming.”

Ryan’s jealousy was the least of Mitch’s worries right now. “Trust me, it hasn’t been a cakewalk.”

“What do you mean?”

Mitch glanced through the glass doors toward Ryan’s office, where Simone and Shannon were sleeping. The room was still dark, and there was no movement, so he doubted they were awake, but he lowered his voice just in case. “Look, it was a trip senior year, even I’ll admit that. Money, parties, girls… They lavished it all on us. But once college was over, things got real.”

He turned to face Ryan and gripped the back of a chair in front of him. “The Cyphers are not nobodies. They’re exactly what that article states. The Power Elite. Three of the last twelve US presidents have been members of Cypher and Dagger. Company CEOs, research specialists, military leaders… If you can think of a job that’s important in this country and has the power to shape society, odds are fairly high a Cypher’s in one of those key positions.”

Ryan looked back at the symbol on the screen and drummed his fingers on the long table. “How do you figure into all of this?”

“I’ve not been an exemplary member. The Cyphers got me my job with PreCorp, but once they started pushing me up the ranks, I found reasons to turn down the promotions, which pissed them off. See, they want people in power positions so the Society can dictate policy, and an oil-and-gas conglomerate? Nothing shapes the direction of the world more than oil. But you know how much I hate being behind a desk. I like being out in the field, traveling, and being on site with my team when they’re in the identification stage of an oil reserve, even when they’re doing the initial excavation. I wasn’t built to be a suit. So by turning them down, I was putting myself in some hot water with the society.”

“What happened?” Ryan asked.

“What happened is…we lost Kate.” Mitch looked at his friend. “This is going to sound really shallow but when Kate’s plane crashed, that gave me a reason to stick close to home. You and Julia needed me, and I was able to convince my boss—who also happens to be a Cypher and is my contact within the company—that I needed to stay close to home.”

“Wait. Chris Murdoch’s a Cypher?”

Mitch nodded. Ryan had met Chris, the president of the US division of PreCorp, a dozen times. They’d even all gone to a few ball games together.

“Shit,” Ryan muttered.

Shit wasn’t even the half of it. Mitch resumed pacing. “I do the bare minimum. I go to one meeting a year, and I schmooze it up like I’m supposed to, but then I come home and pretend like it didn’t happen. And most of the time I convince myself they don’t care about where I am or what I’m doing. But that’s obviously not the case anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Mitch said, turning to face his brother-in-law. “I don’t think Simone was the target tonight. I’m pretty sure it was me.”

“Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Hold on a minute.” Ryan tugged off his glasses and pushed out of his chair. “Simone’s late husband turned state’s evidence against these people. Even if they are linked to the Cyphers, which this article can’t even confirm, that doesn’t mean someone coming after her has anything to do with you.”

Mitch closed his eyes and pressed his fingers against his suddenly aching forehead. He’d give just about anything to go back to that drunken state of oblivion he’d been in earlier tonight, but he knew now that was no longer an option.

“You don’t get it.” He dropped his hand. “I remember this case, Ryan. I remember it because the society made sure every member learned a valuable lesson during it. All three of the managing partners of that firm were Cyphers, and they got caught doing something illegal. The Society didn’t care whether they broke the law or not. They only cared that the Society’s name was tarnished in the press because of it. They cut those three loose. And I don’t doubt they put out a hit on Simone’s husband if he was the one who turned over evidence against them. The Society comes before everything else—work, family, women—and those three went against the code. You don’t go against the code. Ever.”

Ryan leaned back against the table, fingering his glasses. “So you’re saying—”

“I’m saying, if the Cyphers were watching Simone, wondering if she knew something, or if Steve had given her something that could still implicate them in some way, then they’d know I was dating her. And I’m already a fuck-up in their eyes. I don’t think that hit was meant for her. If it was, they could have taken her out at any time at her own house. I think they came after me. Because I got in too deep with the enemy. I went against the code.”

“But you didn’t. Not knowingly, at least.”

Mitch sighed. “They won’t see it that way.”

Ryan pursed his lips and looked at the computer screen in stunned silence. After several moments, he lifted his head and pinned Mitch with a determined look. “We don’t know that for sure. You and Simone have been dating for over six months. This still could be about her.”

“Not if they just now caught up with her. She was in the WITSEC program. Even though she left, she didn’t assume her old identity. It’d make sense it would take them time to track her down.”

“Maybe.” Ryan shook his head. “But it’s still just a guess. There’s no logical reason for them to want to get rid of you. You didn’t technically do anything against them.”

Ryan saw things in terms of profit and loss. He was a numbers guy, always had been. But Mitch knew how these people worked. To them, there was always an acceptable loss, no matter the cost. “I thought for myself. I’ve already gone against what they want dozens of times. They’d see my dating Simone as the final straw.”